Details

Pre-order. Ships after 15 October 2026.

An homage to the matchbook — the staple giveaway of gay bars and nightclubs — and to the pleasure it stood for.

Before cell phones, nearly every gay bar handed out matchbooks. They lit a cigarette, and they carried a name and a number written inside the cover while cruising. Darian Newman's hardcover archives 200 of them, from The Saint, Florent, The Stud, St. Marks Baths, The Eagle and beyond.

Twelve essays run alongside the archive — Peter Berlin, Rick Castro, AA Bronson and Michael Bullock among the voices — on love, loss, lust and possibility. It is a design book and a time capsule at once: a record of a period when queer spaces had visual identities of their own, made by and for the people who gathered there, each matchbook carrying bespoke typography and imagery cut for one bar or bathhouse. Design for marginalised communities so often turns on protest; these exude pleasure — of being out and going out, of lighting a cigarette, of getting a stranger's number with the promise of what comes next.

• Hardcover, 246 pages
• 8 x 10 inches
• An archive of 200 matchbooks
• By Darian Newman; edited by Lucas Hilderbrand; photography by Linda Simpson
• Essays by Peter Berlin, AA Bronson, Michael Bullock, Michael Andor Brodeur, Marke Bieschke, Rick Castro, Owen Keehnen, David Kennerley, Juanita MORE!, J. Todd Ormsbee and Erik Piepenburg
• Published by Dark Entries
• ISBN 9798985170467

Pre-order items ship when stock arrives. Anything else ordered alongside a pre-order will be held and dispatched together.